LETSOS: It’s important to think of the Fourteenth Amendment this Labor Day

Niko Letsos, Democratic candidate for U.S, Congress

Published 5:06 am, Friday, August 22, 2014

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LETSOS: It’s important to think of the Fourteenth Amendment this Labor Day

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As Labor Day approaches, we should think of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Passed in 1868 during Reconstruction, the Fourteenth Amendment is concerned with the rights of citizens and equal protection of laws.

The “Citizenship Clause” of the amendment defined for the first time how citizenship was granted: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Although in 1868 the goal was overturning race-based restrictions to citizenship, the Fourteenth Amendment enshrined principles important to all working Americans.

Beginning with the first republics in the ancient world, citizenship’s top privilege was voting.

Our Founding Fathers were obsessed with ancient models and acted accordingly. When the Constitution was ratified, only a very small portion of Americans could vote. What defined citizenship was hazy and it came to be informally associated with the right to vote. By the Civil War, voting rights had been extended to white adult males in most states.

With citizenship came the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights and the similar laws in states.

During and after the Civil War, more and more Americans lived in cities as industrialization accelerated. In 1800, only six percent of Americans lived in urban areas; by 1900, the figure was a little under 40 percent and growing fast.

Of course, the vast majority of residents in these industrial cities were skilled and unskilled laborers. Even in sometimes desperate conditions, these laborers, if born here or naturalized, were full citizens because of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Without the “citizenship clause,” the rights of many laborers would have been far from assured.

This history must have been in President Grover Cleveland’s head when he supported establishing Labor Day as one of the earlier federal holidays in 1894. His actions were an immediate response to the Pullman Strike. Agitation had been growing for a decade to honor ordinary American workers.

European countries had long been run people who had scorn for laborers, and America had been too.

Thomas Jefferson in his younger years feared the idea of a country full of city-dwelling working men. Jefferson instead idealized the self-sufficiency of the yeoman farmer. But in Jefferson’s day, laborers were not full citizens or such a large group. Cleveland had to act because these laborers now were his fellow citizens, with the same rights as the president.

Honoring labor was a crucial step in the development of American democracy. America since its founding had been a place where you could get ahead through hard work. But for too long, we had reserved a full citizen’s rights for those that had already made it, not those who were in the process of getting ahead.

By 1894, the government was beginning to reverse course and identify with the average American: the working man on his way up.

If all of our Founding Fathers could see our country today, they would be amazed by our prosperity, the good we have done for the world, and how we have remained true to their guiding vision.

Perhaps the greatest surprise though would be to the degree we have become a working man’s republic. Our Founders lived in age where government was led by leisurely gentlemen.

Today, there is outrage when our elected leaders take long vacations in the summer. Our politics are dominated by issues that matter to laborers: jobs, education, the business cycle, and making sure tax money is spent effectively and prudently.

From Social Security to the minimum wage, the government shares its priorities with laborers. The common hope is that everyone will succeed. Recognizing all Americans to be equal citizens and then acting in a way to support every citizen is what Labor Day is about.

Benjamin Franklin, one of the first Americans that had a rags-to-riches story, would be proud.

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I am sure our Founding Fathers would see that the value we put in laboring men and women is the source of our country’s greatness. America has become the greatest country in the world by outworking every other.

By having a day to honor ordinary workers, we strive to maintain our work-ethic and make sure every American has the opportunity to work for their American Dream.